Information on data
Note to users: The European Central Bank (ECB) is primarily responsible for compiling and disseminating monetary and financial indicators at the European level.
Data sources
Eurostat disseminates data from these sources:
- ECB for bilateral exchange rates and interest rates (euro yield curves, short-term and long-term)
- Directorate‑General for Economic and Financial Affairs for effective exchange rates on price and cost competitiveness
- Deutsche Bundesbank for exchange rates of most non-EU countries
- candidate countries: Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Türkiye transmit bilateral exchange rates directly to Eurostat
- conversion factors are computed by Eurostat
Exchange rates
An exchange rate is the price of a currency in terms of another currency. Eurostat’s collection on exchange rates includes the following:
This is expressed as ‘1 euro (ECU before 1 January 1999) = … units of the other currency’. This database folder provides data on a daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.
Sources are:
- ECB for euro exchange rates
- European Commission for ECU exchange rates
- Deutsche Bundesbank for most non-EU countries
- EU candidate countries and potential candidates.
For an overview, please consult the information on statistical processing.
Euro area countries are requested to transmit data to Eurostat in ‘eurofixed’, meaning using the agreed irrevocable exchange rates for the whole time span, which has become the new national currency.
The series obtained is expressed in eurofixed currency and it preserves the growth rates as the original national currency series. In order to transform data from eurofixed to euros/ECU, the conversion factors need to be used. While the series expressed in euro/ECU do not preserve the original growth rates, they should be used for cross-country comparisons and for aggregation.
It is important to note that the conversion factors are set to equal 1 starting with the reference period when the country joined the euro area or from the period the country changed over their national currency to the euro.
This database folder provides the industrial countries' effective exchange rates.
The source of this data is the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission.
There are 2 kinds of effective exchange rate indices:
- nominal effective exchange rates (NEER) are used to measure changes in the value of a currency against a trade-weighted basket of currencies. A rise in the index means a strengthening of the currency;
- real effective exchange rates (REER) are used to measure the change in competitiveness of a country by accounting for changes in costs or prices relative to other countries. A rise in the index means a loss of competitiveness.
This database folder provides historical data on the exchange rates of the former currencies, meaning Belgian Franc, Deutsche Mark, etc., of those countries that joined the euro area.
Interest rates
An interest rate may be defined as the charge for borrowing money. It is measured as the percentage ratio between the sum payable to the lender and the amount borrowed, at an annual rate. Eurostat’s collection on exchange rates includes the following:
This database folder provides data on yields and coefficients calculated for various euro yield curves (par yield curves, instantaneous forward curves, and zero-coupon spot rate yield curves) based on various bond selections.
This database folder provides data on yield on government bonds with a 10-year maturity. These interest rates are used to define the Maastricht criterion on long-term interest rates. This is one of the criteria used to determine if a EU country is eligible to join the European Monetary Union.
This database folder provides data on government bond yields with maturity of about 10 years.
This database folder money market rates for short-term interest rates on the financial market for loans or deposits. Most of the series shown are interbank rates. Data for the following maturities are available:
- overnight
- 1-month
- 3-month
- 6-month
- 12-month
This database folder presents:
- day-to-day interest rates for euro area countries
- 3-month interest rates for euro area countries
- central government bond yields
- euro yield curves (former Eurostat calculation that ceased in 2005).